Pajamas conservatives

I was just looking at Pajamas Media, a very active website with many contributors. Apart from its cutesy title, which I find off-putting, I see nothing at this site that seems in the remotest sense conservative or that bears any relationship to what was once known as the conservative movement in this country. The contributors seem like a bunch of liberals who don’t like Islamic extremism and anti-American leftism.

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Jake J. writes:

I call them the “anti-hippy party.” Most of them are sensibly against the excesses of the left that most experienced firsthand while at college, yet know very little or nothing about actual conservatism. We most often deal with them while covering events at local colleges here in Chicago, we’ll be chatting amicably enough about some subject, like illegal immigration for example, and so long as you never mention race or that awkward fact that some cultures may not be up to the challenge of assimilating or even be capable of becoming Americans everything is hunky-dory. However, the moment you bring up one of the “unspeakable topics” they shift uncomfortably, start sighing, and begin to glance longingly for a door by which to escape.

They are Anti-leftists, Anti-Jihadists, but in no particular way shape or form are they noticably conservative, as least as far as that term has been widely understood on this website.

Jeff in England writes:

You and your reader(s) seem to talk in a sneering way about Pajamas as a site for ex-hippies and liberals who are anti-Islam and against anti-Americanism etc. These are exactly the sort of people you need to enter dialogue with ally with if you want to enact real change in the policy towards the Islamic incursion and Muslim immigration. It is great news that some liberals are thinking like this (and feminists who blog on the site such as Phyllis Chesler).

C’mon Larry (and VFR readers), stop being so purist and holier than thou and come back to reality. Not all people opposing Islam and Muslim immigration are going to be traditionalist conservatives. Or any sort of conservative. You will need decent and sensible liberals like these on your side if you want to have any success at all not only on the immigration issue but in renewing Western civilisation.

LA replies:

I’ve said many times that I welcome liberals who oppose Islam. It is not their liberalism that I am objecting to, but the fact that they think of themselves as, present themselves as, and are thought by the world as being, conservatives. A site like Pajamas Media, and a Hollywood liberal like Roger Simon, are now seen as representing conservatism. If a beagle calls itself a race horse, and I say, “No, you’re a beagle, stop calling yourself a race horse,” does that make me a purist?

However, even when anti-Islam liberals are honest about their liberalism, there may be the further problem that they are using their anti-Islamism to promote a liberal agenda, for example, defining Western culture as “secular” as distinct from Islam, and so using anti-Islamism to advance the secularization of the West. Or defining the Islam threat as a threat of “theocracy,” by which they really mean Christianity, and thus turning the movement to defend the West from Islam into a movement to divest the West of Christianity.

Terry Morris writes:

You wrote: “The contributors seem like a bunch of liberals who don’t like Islamic extremism and anti-American leftism.”

But isn’t that basicly what defines a modern “conservative,” someone who doesn’t like Islamic extremism or anti-American leftism?

LA replies:

Of course.

Jake J. writes:

What Jeff in England is saying seems laudable on its face until you actually have to deal with these folks. I’m not sneering, just calling ‘em like I see ‘em. These “Pajamas conservatives” have the fatal flaw all of liberals, they aren’t willing to do what it takes to solve any of the problems they are allegedly against.

To wit: a fence on our southern border? Mean spirited! Stop Muslim immigration? Discriminatory! On the one hand they rail against the problem of illegal immigration or jihadism while at the exact same time celebrating “hard working” illegal aliens or “poor downtrodden” Muslims who just want to come here for a better life.

In my opinion they are actually worse than out and out liberals, because the liberal is honest enough to be an enemy, whereas these folks are the ones who truly keep anything useful from happening.

So please allow me to don my sycophant hat and note that Mr. Auster has nailed this one: these beagles are most definitely not race horses!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 17, 2008 02:07 PM | Send